Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
“Party?” My brow curves, resting my hip against the kitchen island. “I know it’s been a while, but I’m much the same. Still despise parties.”
River waves me off. “I promise you it won’t be a wild one. It’s at Priest’s, so I’m sure people are too scared to attend anyway.” She reaches forward and plucks a grape, popping it into her mouth. She flinches, sliding up to a barstool. “Tactless. Sorry.”
I shrug, tightening the silk tie around my robe. “Don’t be. It’s history. But I’m not coming to this party.”
River holds my stare, the corner of her eye wrinkling and her smile turning sarcastic. “Yes. You are.”
* * *
This house is a vessel for the dark and damned. With bleeding black walls and flooring paved for hell, it’s like stepping through time instead of the front door. A chandelier of fire rains down above, and the checkered marble floor of the entrance shifts the hands of time back to the young girl who stumbled over them like a lost lamb waiting for slaughter.
A shiver moves over my spine the longer I stand, so I grab onto River as she pushes us through the swarm of people. Locked in an alternate universe, it’s eerily similar to my birthday party all those years ago. Will people be mad that I’m here? I haven’t seen Halen and Stella since the ritual, and gathering Halen’s lack of knowledge with everything that went down, how much longer until she finds out and hates me all over again.
Halsey and Post Malone play through the house as River shoves a group of guys out of our way, separating their meaningful conversation about who they were going to lay tonight.
She pulls out a velvet stool beneath the kitchen island, grabs a bottle of—something—from the fridge, and places it on top of the obsidian countertop. I can’t help it. My eyes find the corner where my cake once swallowed the space.
“Do you remember our old friend?”She rubs the tall amber bottle as if it were something else…
I squint at the label.
Someone passes behind me, but River doesn’t shift her focus from me. She rolls her eyes. “Don Julio!”
I click my fingers. “Right!”
I don’t remember. Probably because of the Don Julio.
She fills both our glasses and slides mine across the counter. I take a sip, the aged barrel smokiness of vanilla and caramel stirring my memories. Now I remember…
“Thank you for the birthday party.” I choke on my whisper. “But you didn’t have to do this.” My fingers itch to touch the velvet texture of his skin and the sculpted lines of his lips. The party can be heard on the other side of the door thanks to the heavy bass line, yet here we are. In his bedroom, after I found myself running away from the knowledge that he’s in fact, allowing other girls on his lap.
I reach up, and my hand is on his cheek before I can stop myself. Mortified, I’m about to pull away when he stops me, his eyes closing and the bloodstains over his face a brilliant shade of slaughter.
“When will you get it, Madness? It’s not only in there—” He gestures over his shoulder with his head. The fire in his tone burns through his throat when his eyes drill through mine. “It’s every. Single. One of them.”
It is the first time we’ve ever been this close together for this long. Twice in one day I’ve seen a different side to him, the one I suspect lives beneath the pile of corpses he leaves behind.
His arm slips behind my back, seizing the air in my lungs when he pulls me close. “Fuck.” He buries his face into my hair. “You’ll leave soon.”
Confused, my neck aches when I bend to look up at him. Ridiculous since he’s built like a beast yet radiates controlled elegance. Everything he does is deliberate.
Something trickles over the base of my foot, but I ignore it.
“I’m not going anywhere.” His eyes darken as they drop to my mouth, probably making sure I said the words and he wasn’t imagining it. “Unless you don’t want me.”
A blizzard gusts through my veins when the corner of his mouth curves up in a sneer. It isn’t a beautiful one. It’s feral, animalistic, and reminds me of the monsters I’d been told about as a child.
“Don’t you see the problem? It’s not that I don’t want you.” He steps away from me as if he’s realized what he’s done. The muscles in his jaw tense. “It’s that I can’t help that I fucking hate you.”
“Earth to Luna!” River clicks her fingers, snapping me out of the blurred memory of my birthday party. When I had found the girl that was so comfortable on his lap, dead on his bedroom floor. I’d watched him kill. Daily. But that was the first time he didn’t do it for a reason. He didn’t kill people in some twisted lesson to teach me something. At that point, I knew he did it because he had to. It was also the last time we ever went near each other again until Madison’s charity event.